Talking not Etheridge’s bailiwick

Thursday

Jun 20, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Melissa Etheridge should shut up and sing.

This is not a new opinion; I formed it several years ago when I saw her perform at the Cape Cod Melody Tent. Although far from my favorite artist, she’s recorded some good rock songs and is fun to see in concert.

But she talks a lot on stage, and that night she launched into a long lecture about her bout with Stage 2 breast cancer. By then she had been cancer-free for several years, and she essentially told the crowd that she was able to cure herself because she was strong and alive and in tune with her body and spirit and yadda yadda yadda.

Whatever floats your boat when dealing with disease, I thought, but I frankly found the speech obnoxious. Implicit in her message was the idea that she was somehow special and different from other women who get breast cancer and don’t survive. Are they not strong? Not in tune with their bodies? Not spiritual enough?

I tend to cringe when cancer survivors credit their recovery to personal strength, prayer or optimism, rather than luck, medicine and the random course of disease. Coping mechanisms are one thing, but cancer is largely indifferent to one’s sunny disposition or religious affiliations. To believe otherwise is to blame the victim, rather than the cancer.

But now comes Melissa again this week, passing judgment on Angelina Jolie’s decision to undergo a double mastectomy after learning she had the gene mutation that gave her strong odds for developing breast cancer. Jolie not only underwent the procedure, but she announced it to the world in a New York Times op-ed piece that was rightly hailed as courageous.

Apparently Etheridge doesn’t share that opinion. In an interview with the Washington Blade, she said she wouldn’t call Jolie’s decision “the brave choice.” Instead, she said, “I actually think it’s the most fearful choice you can make ... My belief is that cancer comes from inside you and so much of it has to do with the environment of your body. It’s the stress that will turn that gene on or not.”

Now, if I wanted advice on, say, how to tune a guitar, Melissa would be my girl. But cancer treatment? Not so much. Etheridge should know better than to pass judgment on another woman’s choice, especially one grounded in science and practicality, rather than magical thinking.

Jolie carries a BRCA gene mutation that gave her a whopping 85 percent chance of developing the same breast cancer that killed her mother. The mastectomy reduced those chances to 5 percent. That’s a fearful choice? I’d call it smart. What’s brave is for an international sex symbol to go public with the revelation that she’s had her breasts removed.

As for Etheridge, celebrities tend to consider themselves larger than life, and perhaps it comforts her to believe that she’s in control of her body’s “environment” — whatever that means — and was thus able to overcome disease through sheer force of her wonderfulness. Three years ago, she told More magazine that cancer is “just a symptom of our bodies being out of balance and the cure is to understand health. It’s to understand our bodies and our spirits — our souls — better.”

Etheridge may have strong beliefs, but they happen to be inaccurate. According to the National Cancer Institute, there is no research showing stress causes cancer. Nor is there evidence that diet, exercise, or a well-understood soul would affect the course of cancer for a woman with the BRCA gene mutation.

Etheridge is entitled to her opinions, or course, and she’s done much good over the years by opening up about her own cancer ordeal. But she’s way out of line here, and her comments smack of both ignorance and insensitivity. The next time she takes a public stage, let’s hope she’s making music rather than spreading misconceptions.